Influencing policy change in Uganda: An impact evaluation of the Uganda Poverty and Conservation Learning Group's work

In October 2014, the board of Uganda Wildlife Authority approved a policy change to increase the mountain gorilla tourist permit fee from US$5 to US$10 per permit. Focusing on the policy change, this evaluation interrogates the role and influence of Uganda Poverty and Conservation Group (U-PCLG) who appeared to have accelerated and shaped the UWA’s decision to give communities a greater share of the mountain gorilla tourist permit fee from the national park.

An internal evaluation team at IIED used a combination of process tracing and Bayesian updating to investigate how U-PCLG influenced the policy change. Process tracing was used to examine the case in detail, and establish whether a series of different factors had combined over time to produce the policy change. Bayesian analysis helped to measure confidence in U-PCLG’s contribution claims, and to update the evaluation team’s confidence in them according to the relevance of emerging new knowledge or evidence.

This publication is an output of the Poverty and Conservation Learning Group (PCLG) - Briefing Paper

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The Poverty and Conservation Learning Group is an international network of conservation and development organisations that promotes learning on the linkages between biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction to improve policy and practice.